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...I'll never be able to read again the "archives" I have saved myself on some 3 1/2" floppy disks, which I still keep somewhere in a drawer...

And whose fault is it that you didn't upgrade your data storage from floppies to newer, more current media before floppy drives became obsolete? Technology isn't stagnant; it keeps evolving, and sometimes devolving—the latest is not always the greatest—so one has to keep their data storage media current to avoid losing data.

Thank you for caring, and for learning me something I don't know. What you describe is precisely the problem.

Many people who make a living archiving documents describe it exactly the way you do, except they present it as an issue. I'm glad for you you've managed to digitise every scrap of paper pertaining to your life since the Commodore 64 was around, but most people can't do that -- and coming to think of it, most institutions devoted to archival can't either.

Of course paper gets lost or destroyed. Most everything from the past has been, and will be. Including all your digitised archives, which, if you've been persistent enough to keep, future generations will not care to maintain.

The point is, if you just stack old papers in a suitcase in the attic, and do nothing, your grandchildren will still be able to read them. If you leave a colour portrait of a loved one in a tomb in Fayoum, and do nothing, future generations will be able to look at them several thousands years later. If you do the same thing with Commodore floppies, super-duper glass media or whatever, it's guaranteed nobody will be able to read them in a very short while.

There's no way I could digitise the thousands of books I own, a sizeable amount of which have been bequeathed to me by departed relatives -- after having crossed a few borders, and lived through a few wars and revolutions. Mind you, many of them are in a better condition than brand-new books printed and sold today.

Even if I had the funds of, say, Donald Trump, I still could not digitise them. You can't digitise the weight of a book, the feel of paper, the dry flowers that have been pressed between the pages.

...I'll never be able to read again the "archives" I have saved myself on some 3 1/2" floppy disks, which I still keep somewhere in a drawer...

And whose fault is it that you didn't upgrade your data storage from floppies to newer, more current media before floppy drives became obsolete? Technology isn't stagnant; it keeps evolving, and sometimes devolving—the latest is not always the greatest—so one has to keep their data storage media current to avoid losing data.

Thank you for caring, and for learning me something I don't know. What you describe is precisely the problem.

Many people who make a living archiving documents describe it exactly the way you do, except they present it as an issue. I'm glad for you you've managed to digitise every scrap of paper pertaining to your life since the Commodore 64 was around, but most people can't do that -- and coming to think of it, most institutions devoted to archival can't either.

Of course paper gets lost or destroyed. Most everything from the past has been, and will be. Including all your digitised archives, which, if you've been persistent enough to keep, future generations will not care to maintain.

The point is, if you just stack old papers in a suitcase in the attic, and do nothing, your grandchildren will still be able to read them. If you leave a colour portrait of a loved one in a tomb in Fayoum, and do nothing, future generations will be able to look at them several thousands years later. If you do the same thing with Commodore floppies, super-duper glass media or whatever, it's guaranteed nobody will be able to read them in a very short while.

There's no way I could digitise the thousands of books I own, a sizeable amount of which have been bequeathed to me by departed relatives -- after having crossed a few borders, and lived through a few wars and revolutions. Mind you, many of them are in a better condition than brand-new books printed and sold today.

Even if I had the funds of, say, Donald Trump, I still could not digitise them. You can't digitise the weight of a book, the feel of paper, the dry flowers that have been pressed between the pages.

You keep missing the point. As long as media is kept up to date, data will be accessible. Your Fayoum example fails to mention of the thousands, if not millions of portraits that get lost because the media they are on and/or are made of is perishable and NOT easily and affordably replicable. Photographs fade over time. Dried flowers are a pale imitation that fails to catch the glory of a bloom unlike a digital copy of the original.

Digitizing books does not require the funds of Donald Trump. I spent around $300 for a paper cutter that could cut the spines off books and around $450 for a duplexing ADF scanner (which included Adobe Acrobat Standard and other software) to scan the pages liberated from the book spines. Frankly, I don't give the north end of a south bound furry little rodent about the feel or smell of books; reading from a TV screen or other monitor, or an e-book reader is far more pleasant. I definitely didn't like the weight of one banker box full of books, let alone forty of them and the amount of precious space they took up. I prefer the content over the container.

Many classic movies have been lost because the film they were on deteriorated. You may have hung onto numerous books over the years but, for every book you have saved, thousands, if not millions or more were lost due their fragile nature and couldn't be preserved or replicated. If my house burns down today, the only books I will lose are the ones that haven't been digitized yet. The others have been backed up and are easily recovered.

You are sadly mistaken about future generations not caring about data that people have preserved. It is a treasure trove to future historians. Families do want to know about their forbearers, something you have already admitted to about yours. I would kill to know what my maternal grandfather looked like; he passed away before I was born and all pictures of him were destroyed in a fire. I only have vague memories of my paternal grandfather as an old man, who passed away when I was very young. No one kept any photos of him from when he was younger. Granted, some mementoes can't be digitized, such as my paternal grandfather's old railroad watch, my uncle's WWII Navy pea coat, some of my Mama's jewelry, or many of my Daddy's tools (including some his father's), all of which I still have (though many of the tools were stolen shortly before he passed away); my sister also has many mementoes. However, all could be easily lost in a robbery, fire, storm, etc. That's why I have photos of all them, which are thoroughly backed up, so their memory can preserved no matter what may happen.

If you want to live in the past and be bound to your fragile, vulnerable possessions, go for it. I, and many other people prefer more practical and safer ways of maintaining data.

I will never understand the way some computer types (and now ladies, it seems) insist in turning light-hearted, anecdotical discussions about the use of technology into flaming wars, personal agression and claims that only morons do things differently from them.

Your suggestions that "I want to live in the past", "be bound to my fragile, vulnerable possessions", that I'm "sadly mistaken" or that it is "my fault" if I can't read old floppies anymore are downright insulting, condescending, and have no place in a civilised conversation of any sort.

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